


The Greater Good

by tambrathegreat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 07:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3319154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambrathegreat/pseuds/tambrathegreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus Snape sees dead people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greater Good

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 Snape Fest on Live Journal.
> 
> The Prompt: Severus must come out of retirement to stop a new threat to the wizarding world.
> 
> Thanks to Liz for her help in making this story understandable.

 

Severus Snape can see dead people, and not just the run-of-the-mill wizarding ghosts that haunt ley lines and magical dwellings. Since his death and near- Lazarine rebirth at the hands of a  swotty Gryffindor know-it-all, he has been able to see more than the average wizard.  He can see Muggle ghosts.

  


His first visitation, on the night of the Final Battle when he fled from  Aurors and erstwhile compatriots alike, was from his father, who glared dourly at his son from the threadbare recesses of the chair the old man had haunted drunkenly long before his death. Tobias Snape stays there always, his lack of magic making him unable to communicate more than visually with Severus.  His presence is enough to make Severus find other places to spend his forcefully mandated retirement.  He is effectively barred from any realm of employment, now that his services are no longer needed.  It’s just as well.  He sometimes loses days of time--one time he woke up in Cardiff a week completely gone, and it is only getting worse. .  

  


He doubts he could work in any capacity anymore.  Severus Snape is once again the king of his corner of hell: Spinner’s End,  Cokesworth , UK.

  


He sits in the desolate playground that he knew as a boy, wishing for a sighting of the one ghost who will never come to him.   Most days he is alone in his masochistic vigil, able to ignore the few Muggle ghosts that appear to him. Even the drear northern winter light diffuses their essence, and though his skin still prickles with cold awareness as they pass around and through him, he can pretend that their wan half-life is not part of his.  He’s observed that most of the Muggle ghosts are obviously confused, unsure of their state of being.  Others, the ones ripped from life violently, while rarer, are harder to ignore even in the light.  

  


For the past few days a woman-- in the threadbare uniform of the grinding poverty that has rested on  Cokesworth since before Severus could talk-- sits in the park opposite Severus.  An image flashes through his head, one of the many that he has from his days as a young and eager Death Eater.  He squelches the picture before it can fully form.  As he observes her,  she watches a small girl, beautiful in the chubby way of all children, and she cries.  Severus suspects she lives the same life that his mother did and it makes him angry that she should choose to do so. She does little to care for the little girl, and flinches when the girl falls, but doesn’t rush to help her, to kiss her tears away.  When the girl  of no more than seven or eight leaves the park, the woman remains.  It’s like this for days on end until Severus has had enough.

  


He strides to her as the child struggles to make the swings work.  “Madam, is that child you’re so obviously neglecting your daughter?”

  


The woman’s mouth works but no sound escapes her lips. It is then that he sees his mistake for the woman has an insubstantial quality to her and gaping slash runs the width of her too-white throat.  He turns ready enough to run away from the fresh horror.  He’s saved enough people for a lifetime and is unwilling to do battle for the dead too.   The child leaves the swings without a sound being made and moves around  Severus’ body leaving him shivering.  She too has a death wound that he failed to notice from afar.  There is a sooty curse smudge under her chin that reeks of Dark  magics .  

  


Severus is rooted to the spot as if struck dumb.  He cannot force his feet to propel him away from the child or the woman as compelling as his desire not to become involved is.  The girl passes through the bench that the woman is seated on, and she makes her exit as she has done every day.  The woman resumes her silent and lachrymose vigil.

  


The next morning, after he washes his face and hands, paying particular attention to his fingernails that look as if he’s worked with rusted iron, he passes Tobias’ spot.  The old man is waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.  Severus, as usual ignores him, fixes his fry up and a cup of strong tea.  He eats it with stubborn slowness as the old man’s ghost hovers in the kitchen.  Severus hopes the old man’s vigil over breakfast isn’t going to be a permanent fixture to his morning.  It puts him off his feed.  

  


As Snape does his morning cleaning, washing dishes, wiping down the warped counters, putting out the trash, Tobias hovers, his expression, if possible, even more dour than before.  As Severus dons the most Muggle of his teaching robes so that he might escape the old man’s oppressive presence, Tobias retreats to his chair.   

  


Severus doesn’t know what brings him back the next day.  He’s been tortured by visions of the two disparate ghosts.  He knows, with the same gut feeling that kept him alive for so many years as a spy, that they are related to each other in a macabre cycle, just as he knows that he, somehow, is part of the reason they appear to him.  

  


There is a new figure at the park today along with the woman and child.  It is another young woman dressed in the scanty costume of prostitute or maybe a club girl.  It is obvious from a distance that the woman has died in a most ghastly way.  Severus is reminded of the grim and grainy photos of the victims of Red Jack of turn of the century London until another image superimposes itself over his mind’s eye, an image that he has tried hard to forget that he witnessed, an image that was the turning point in Severus’ desire to serve the Dark Lord.  The Dark Lord’s threat to Lily may have been what drove Severus to  Albus Dumbledore, but it was one particular revel that changed Severus’ mind about the rightness of the cause.

  


There was a woman, a Muggle, brought to one of the meetings by one of the  Lestrange brothers, sick bastards that they were.  She had obviously been ill-used even before she was laid out on the makeshift stone altar.  The Dark Lord had taken his time, had relished, slicing off bits of the woman’s body as she screamed in agony.  What was left of her at the end of the so-called training session, had not been  recognisable as human.  

  


Severus feels bile rise in his throat as the newest horror, the little girl, and the crying woman approach him.  He cannot move as they each reach for him.  He feels the dark magic that killed them as they touch his skin, he knows the horror they faced as they died.  As they enter his body, one after the other, he sees all, the beginning, the pain-soaked middle, and the hellfire and brimstone end.

  


His life has all come down to this one moment. 

  


He comes to himself after dark.   The last of the autumn leaves have fallen on Severus as he slept.  The little girl is still with him.  She points to a spot in the woods, the  spot that was so sacred to Severus as a child. He rises and follows her direction.  

  


The copse has been defiled with the blood of innocents.  Dark magic swirls around his feet as he enters the grotto of winter skeletal trees.  There is a boy in the  centre .  He smiles up at Severus, his crooked teeth, greasy, too-long hair,  and weedy appearance are made worse by the too-large handed down clothes the boy wears.  There's an air of twisted, relentless anger about the boy.  The boy looks like a double of him as a child.

  


_ He should… _ a voice strangely like Dumbledore’s says in Severus’ head.  _ He is what you became later... _

  


The boy rises from his spot in the leaves and Severus sees yet another victim, this one with flaming red hair, so like another girl child who revealed herself as a witch as she floated on the air in front of Severus on a cloud-scudded summer day.

  


Severus heaves the contents of his stomach onto the bed of leaves.  When he is finished, Severus aims his wand at the boy, who has waited patiently beside him.  The boy doesn’t flinch as Severus draws his magical energies up for use.  He smiles as the wand touches his chest.  In a voice which promises a wealth of vocal riches, but hasn’t yet reached its timbre, the boy says, _ “This is what  we need brother.” _

  


_ And what of  my soul,  Albus ? _

  


Severus raises  his wand to the boy’s head, if he doesn’t finish this boy, he will become just another in the long line of Dark wizards who grasp power with both hands, who will wrest the life of innocents if need be.  He will be the malformed thing that Severus fears he has become, with his soul that was torn  assunder that night on the astronomy tower.

  


He lets loose a green jet of light that speeds towards the boy’s head....  

  


_ My boy, I’m so sorry,  but I ask you to do this for the greater good.  _ Albus says as the green jet envelopes the weedy boy turned Death Eater, the unrequited lover and betrayer of Lily . _ I f there had been any other way…  Only you know the state of your own soul.  Only you can tell if putting me out of my misery will do you harm.  It’s a mercy you’re doing, even if it seems like semantics now...   
_

And inexplicably, Severus is back at Spinner’s End.  He is standing next to his father’s chair.  Tobias rises, “It’s time to go home, lad.   Yer Mum and that girl you fancied have been waiting for you..”

  


Severus follows the old man, floats along behind him as Tobias opens a door that wasn’t there in life.  As Tobias twists the knob, he pauses, “For what it’s worth, I tried to help you.  I tried to tell you what you’d become because of that damned old warlock you loved so much.”

  


Severus gives a curt nod, and Tobias passes through. Severus takes one last look at what had been his demesne and his dungeon.  He won’t miss it.  Not one bit.

  



End file.
